After years of trial and error, many mistakes and a lot of pain I have discovered something powerful. One of the best ways for me to feel better about myself is to move with freedom. Mobility, strength, power, speed, agility, balance and co-ordination: When I feel these things in my body I feel them in my mind too. Even the most mentally and emotionally oppressive days are enjoyable when I feel freedom in my body.
I’m not alone in this. After more than a decade in clinical practice, being a lecturer to other doctors and as an author, I’ve discovered that you probably feel the same way. When your body is restricted, it feels like your life is restricted.
Freedom in the mind is rooted in freedom in the body. We know that movement of the body has a powerful effect on the brain. Movement can quieten the mind, making us more peaceful, happier and more adaptable to life’s stresses.
Tight joints, weak muscles and aches and pains are limiting factors to your full expression of self. In these states your body limits how you lift, carry and play with your kids or how you play sports and exercise. The limitations may start subtly with ‘normal’ tightness in movement or weakness when you do things like carrying the shopping.
With a limited body comes decreased energy and drive that stifles your willingness to fully engage with life. These insidious forms of limitations on your life become accepted as ‘normal’ and we accumulate more as we go through life.
Freedom in your body begins in your spine. All your movements are organised around the axis of your body: your spine. If it is compromised by misalignments (called subluxations) then your brain and body compensate by tightening and deactivating muscles to protect itself. The result: You feel stiff and weak.
Stretching through stiffness and strengthening through the deactivation is not a great idea. These approaches work against the body and force it to create even more compensation which is what you are trying to release in the first place! Stretching without correction creates uncontrolled movement and strengthening without correction creates imbalance and both are likely to cause more pain, injury and limitations.
It’s far better to work with your body and allow it to release tightness and reactivate muscles by correcting the underlying structural problems of your body. A recent study found that chiropractic adjustments to correct subluxations created improvement in muscle strength equivalent to 3 weeks of strength training.
Using Advanced BioStructural Correction™ (ABC) technology we discover and correct specific blocks to spinal function that may affect your movement, strength, pain and health.
Chiropractic care can help you to live your bigger life.
Reference:
Changes in H-reflex and V-waves following spinal manipulation. Experimental Brain Research. Vol 233, 4 , pp 1165-1173
